The Vampire & Her Witch

”My people ’o Hanrahan,” Sybyll shouted toward the town once her final preparations were in place. ”Since tha’ murderin’ son ’o tha usurper won’t face me, I will come fer his head an’ offer it to ye’ all fer what ye’ve suffered under ’is rule,” she said, allowing her voice to ripple with power as it spread to every corner of the hometown she’d only ever been able to visit in hiding.

”Keep ta’ yer homes,” she added. ”Soldiers ’o me home, throw down yer arms and go back ta’ yer homes an’ ye won’a be harmed. But fight today, an’ stand wit Ian, and know ye will die ta a man!”

It was her final warning and the last chance for surrender she intended to give her enemies tonight. She doubted many would flee the battlefield and she could already hear the templars and the Inquisitor calling out that the words of a demon or a witch weren’t to be trusted. Still, she had tried, and she would rest with a clean conscience no matter how much blood fell on snow tonight because she had.

”Ipiktok!” Sybyll shouted as she placed her darksteel helm on her head, hiding her enchanting visage behind the red mask of a steel skull with gleaming fangs that would strike fear into the hearts of even the bravest warrior. ”There are traitors and cowards on me walls. Remove them!”

There might only be ten of the Tuscan giants in the Second Army but they were quickly becoming one of the Vale’s preferred tools for cracking open the fortified defenses of human settlements.

When Ashlynn commanded them in battle at the Summer Villa, she outfitted them with stout shields to resist archers as they brought a heavy ram to bear against the gates. Dame Sybyll, however, had no need of a gate-crasher. Instead, she’d been impressed by Heila’s tale of facing Ipiktok in the arena and the weapon his men used to establish dominance from the very beginning of the battle.

-HAAAAAARRRRUUUUUUUUMMMMM-

The sound of Tuscan trumpet blasts filled the air, echoing across the valley like the horns of the damned calling out to warn the living that they would soon join the ranks of the dead. Moments later, another sound filled the air, as if Lord Jalal’s drummers had only been waiting for this moment to resume their playing.

-BOOM- -BOOM- -CLACK- -BOOM BOOM BOOM- -CLACK- -BOOM BOOM BOOM-

The powerful rhythm of the drums filled the air, stirring the blood of Sybyll’s army and infusing them with a strength that went beyond what even the most elite soldiers of the Second Army normally possessed. Strength that turned the already monstrous Tuscans into a terrifying force worthy of being called ’demons.’

”Iron shot!” Ipiktok called as he loaded a smooth iron ball the size of an apple into his sling and began to spin it rapidly over his head. A heartbeat later, the whirring sound of ten slings spinning filled the air until Ipiktok shouted his next order. ”Loose!”

Sybyll’s army stood more than a hundred paces beyond the range of even the best archer on the walls but the distance hardly mattered to the Tuscan slingers who flung balls of iron as if they were nothing heavier than a skipping stone hurled by a small child.

The archers on the wall knew they were out of range for their own arrows so most of them were caught completely by surprise when the giants began to hurl stones at them from hundreds of paces away. Those who had been peeking out from behind the crenellations on the battlements, learned too late that while their enemy was out of the reach of their bows, the defenders were well within the reach of the giants!

Stone exploded in showers of sharp fragments as the iron shot pounded the top of the walls. Men howled in pain as bits of their own fortress wall cut deep into their exposed faces while larger chunks of stone smashed into helms or rained down on their bodies.

Of all the carnage that swept the walls as the iron shot pummeled the stone battlements, however, nothing was more terrifying than the man unlucky enough to be struck directly by one of the Tuscan’s iron balls.

One moment, he was standing in his position with an arrow knocked and ready to draw. The next moment, his head vanished in an explosion of red and gray flesh, splattering across several of his companions who stared in horror as the headless body stood perfectly still, bow still at the ready as if it hadn’t yet realized it was dead before it finally toppled over.

”W-what was that?” a grizzled, gray haired soldier who had fought the demons as a young man during the War of Inches said as he stared in shock at the headless body laying atop the snow. ”What manner of thing...” he stammered as he crouched behind the wall, too terrified to look out at the demon army to see what was happening.

”Again!” Ipiktok commanded his men as he reloaded his sling and set it spinning again. Beside him, a small barrel sitting atop a sled held dozens more of the iron balls. More than enough to soften up the defenses of the enemy before the army advanced and he was in no hurry to charge before they’d emptied their barrels. ”As fast as you can fire, clear the walls!”

It was never Ipiktok’s goal to kill the human defenders directly. In fact, it wasn’t even his goal to kill them at all. The force of impact from their iron sling bullets was enough to shatter stone with explosive force and the shrapnel from those explosions would inflict plenty of wounds on the Hanrahan defenders.

For now, all he needed to do was batter them so badly that none of the archers dared to stand up to take a shot, and thus far, it seemed like Dame Sybyll had been right about how effective that would be.

While Ipiktok’s giants hammered the battlements, raking the length of the walls to either side of the West Gate with a constant barrage of iron balls, the smallest figure on the battlefield made her own move, striding out in front of the army and raising her wand to point at the iron-bound wooden gates that barred their way.

”Through wood’s decay and water’s flow,

Let timber’s strength now ebb and go.

What years would claim, let moments take,

Till fortress gates before me break.”

The wood of the mighty gates had already begun to weaken with the passage of time, and the West Gate had suffered the most since the only people who used it were the common farmers of the valley and the men brave enough or stupid enough to search for their fortune in the wilderness near Airgead Mountain. The East Gate, by contrast, received distinguished visitors like Lord Loman and was never allowed to reveal a shabby side to the world.

Now, those years of neglect became the gap in the wall’s defenses that Heila focused her witchcraft on, prying at it until the wooden defenses gave way and submitted to her will.

Stout timbers, each one more than a handsbreadth thick began to crack and splinter as a pale, silvery green energy crawled up from the frozen ground beneath them. Chunks of wood the size of a baker’s rolling pin fell from the gate before crumbling into piles of rotten wood-dust when they struck the ground.

The reinforcing bands of iron that gave the gate more than half its strength clattered to the ground a few heartbeats later as nails pulled free from wood that had grown too soft to hold them. A few heartbeats later, only a few scraps of wood still clung to the iron hinges, leaving nothing of the once mighty gate behind.

”Forward,” Heila commanded the glowing silver-green tendrils of her power, sending them crawling like a spider into the tunnel beneath the gatehouse as they lashed at the wooden portcullis, tearing it to splinters in half the time it had taken to destroy the first gate.

Standing several paces behind her, Liam Dunn felt his heart grow cold and he pinched himself in disbelief as he watched the diminutive witch tear through the castle’s defenses as though they were nothing but thin parchment.

Next to him, the even more diminutive figure of Heila’s squire watched with wide, unblinking eyes as she refused to miss even a moment of her teacher’s power.

Finally, Heila’s onslaught of rot and decay reached its end as the inner gate at the far side of the gatehouse tunnel crumbled into splinters and dust, revealing the shining armored figure of Sir Tommin Pyre and the Templars who stood at his side.

Beyond them, rank after rank of armored soldiers stood, representing the Temple Guard, the Lothian March, and several of the nearby villages as well. All in all, more than a hundred men had assembled in the West Gate Plaza, ready to spend their lives to stop Sybyll’s army from spreading into the streets of the town.

”Sir Tommin Pyre,” Dame Sybyll said as a predatory grin formed on her lips behind the fangs of her helm’s visor. ”It’s time to learn if you really are as strong as the rumors say...”